


White-Armed Persephone (The I am 83429 Remix)

by Maidenjedi



Category: West Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:22:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She ate pomegranate seeds and returned to the underworld for a season every year.  Written for the 2008 Remix Redux - original story was 'Janus' by Sangerin</p>
            </blockquote>





	White-Armed Persephone (The I am 83429 Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Janus](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/7934) by Sangerin. 



Maybe she'd had a bad reaction to the drugs they had given her, and she died before they could get their demands met.

Maybe they took her overseas and sold her off to some rogue government, and she'd died while trying to escape.

Maybe she had screamed and they'd just shot her, left her body where the news cameras would find it first.

She would become a footnote in history books, the human Persephone who returned to the underworld on occasion. Drugged and coerced and never truly free again.

For the rest of her life, she wondered. Was she alive or dead?

-  
"Do you know what they'll do to you? The nightmare scenario."

Dad's voice - he was saying something else altogether, though. About going to bed, about wanting to have breakfast with his girls, the flirting gone from his voice. He wasn't looking at her mom and she wasn't  
looking back. They were ignoring each other.

Zoey wanted to speak up and ask why. But she didn't.

She just let the guilt settle in and bite her from the inside out.

The nightmare scenario.

-

She walked arm-in-arm with the President and CJ told her breathe, just breathe, you look great.

The President. Her father. Both.

Neither?

She stopped walking and he half-turned, looking at her.

The world faded and she wondered. Was it reality? Or was she dead?

The camera flashes and cacophony of voices calling her name intruded on her thoughts.

Zoey Bartlet, President Bartlet's daughter, turned to the cameras and waved.

-

Her father made the case for New Hampshire and the farm. Abbey didn't even try to chime in, though Zoey knew there should have been something.

She didn't even put up a token argument. She longed for the fresh air and she needed to not be here.

At this place.

They called it the White House, and Zoey had taken to thinking of it as a whitewashed prison.  
-

As she got on the plane, she felt a thrill of fear tickle her throat. It surprised her, especially as a flood of negativity took over her thinking.

What if the plane didn't make it? What if those...men...had followed and would stowaway and hijack the plane? What if there was a stealth fighter waiting for them, to knock them out of the sky? What if they'd booby trapped the engine? What if while they were in the air someone wiped out the northeast with a nuclear strike?

It kept going, more ridiculous each time.

Zoey Bartlet, the fearless and reckless, had become Zoey Bartlet, frightened child.

She hated them.

Soon she would be home, at the farm, away from the White House for awhile. Just the quaint New Hampshire farm that everyone liked to pretend was rough living, but where no one actually knew how to milk cows and pluck chickens and make cherry preserves. Where there were too many Secret Service agents to count and enough firepower to have them all branded as separatists and taken out in an FBI raid.

CJ liked to joke that they could stage a war from the front room, and Zoey knew it was funny because it was almost true, and sad because it really could be true. But now when she thought of going there she didn't think it was funny or sad. She was just grateful.

She mostly slept on the plane, her exhaustion defeating even the adrenaline that coursed through her on takeoff. When she wasn't sleeping she was pretending, so she wouldn't have to see the look on her mother's face change from relief to despair to anger and back again in the space of seconds.

She slept in the car on the way to the house, and once inside she submitted to being undressed and dressed again like a worn-out child, a kid back from a too-long day at the zoo. The kiss on the forehead was nice.

"How long are you going to do this, Mom? A month? A year? Are you going to come to med school with me?"

She tried to keep the small note of hope out of her voice.

-

Liz came and stayed for a few nights, and Ellie sent flowers and promised to come when she could. Just   
hearing Ellie's voice say something that wasn't sarcastic or biting was enough to keep Zoey from feeling at all tethered to this new world.

Because it was like another version of what should be, everything just the same but in a different hue, the faces all just a little different like they'd changed artists halfway through a painting. The first guy painted in pastels and soothing strokes, and this new guy, well, he liked streaks of red and unexpected angles and twists. Chaos.

She might have liked chaos once, liked the streaks of bold colors to offset the black suits and proper manners that surrounded the life of the President's Youngest Daughter. But no more. She found the streaks to be treacherous traces of blood, the colors deceptive and the angles like roadside cliffs without guardrails. She was unsafe in this world.

Zoey shook her head and tried to focus on Liz and Abbey talking, since their chatter was meant for her. Liz was overly bright, like a yellow crayon pressed too hard on paper. Her mom was significantly dimmer, far away in mind and spirit but trying everything she knew to stay present. Zoey couldn't look her in the face and her stomach swam with guilt and empathy when she heard the hard and dark edge that colored their mother's pronunciation of their father's name.

Liz noticed and, as she was trying to make it seem like a normal night, decided it should be a sisters night instead of an all-out girls night. She kicked Mom out to the porch, and they made ice cream and settled in the living room. Liz insisted they watch PG-13 chick flicks and wear their pajamas. All of this reminded Zoey more of a sixth-grade sleep over than anything near "normal" and she felt weary at having to accept that.

"When Harry Met Sally?"

"Okay."

Whatever.

-

"And I'm going to be 40!" "When?" "Someday!"

Zoey noticed Liz had finally dozed off, her inability to stay up past 11 without kids and Doug around to pester her evident. So Zoey picked up their ice cream bowls and her empty glass and went to the kitchen, where she found Abbey digging through the fridge.

"Mom?"

"Mmm?" came the mumbled reply.

"What are you doing?"

Abbey brought a jar of grape jelly out and set it on the counter. "I needed something to eat." She didn't look up at Zoey, didn't meet her eyes.

Zoey walked over to the counter and picked up the jar with her free hand, the other still in a sling. She just looked at it, tried to read her future in the ingredients list. She squinted, and could almost hear the disapproving voice telling her she'd go blind if she kept it up.

Abbey put her hand on Zoey's arm. "Zo? Honey, can I have the jar?"

"What? Oh." Zoey shook herself out of her reverie and handed the jar to her mother.

Abbey got a loaf of bread and two plates, ready to make some sandwiches. She went to the cabinet where they kept canned food and things that could sit unused for awhile, and upon opening it she yelled. "God...damn....damnit!"

She slammed it shut and Zoey jumped. Tears threatened and she blinked them away.

"Mom?" A hurt, whispering, three-year-old voice.

They were quiet for what seemed like an hour. Abbey still didn't look at Zoey, and after a moment she turned away altogether, pressing her hands onto the counter. Her back shook ever so slightly; Zoey wouldn't have noticed if she wasn't watching her mother with all her might, wishing and fearing she would turn around.

Abbey broke the silence. "I can't even leave the house to get peanut butter. I have to give that assignment to someone, or get an escort and a fleet of Secret Service agents to clear the area like I'm carrying the plague and I'll infect the whole store and start a biological apocalypse."

She turned around and gave Zoey a watery smile, still not meeting her eyes.

"Guess we'll have jelly sandwiches, then."

She made the sandwiches and gave one to Zoey, which Zoey chewed the edges of for a moment. Abbey just sort of stared at hers before devouring it in several large bites.

Predatory, thought Zoey. My mother has turned predatory.

"Mom, can I...did they...?" She didn't want to ask. But she had to know.

"How did they handle it?"

Abbey released a harsh sigh. "Handle what?" She played dense so badly.

"Me, Mom. What happened. How did they handle it?"

And Abbey told her. In a shaky, gulping voice, mother told daughter about the case number, and the FBI, and the search. Zoey knew she was leaving something out, but she only wanted the technical details anyway.

"I had a case number?"

Abbey nodded.

"What was it?"

"83429. 7A WF 83429."

Zoey pressed her fingertips together. "7A WF?"

"7A because it was...you were...."

"Kidnapped." The word came out sharp and clipped. Zoey wasn't thinking about it, yet.

Abbey nodded again. "And WF for Washington field office."

83429\. Zoey wondered if the number was random or sequential. 83428 cases like hers had come and gone, or were maybe still open and unsolved.

Abbey hugged Zoey, her arms tight around Zoey's shoulders. "Go to bed, sweet girl. Get some sleep."

Zoey went upstairs, but she didn't sleep.

-

CNN told the pieces of the story Zoey missed. Her dad had given up his office. They bombed Qumar.

And Abdul Sharif had been murdered.

It was the only word Zoey would let herself use. Murdered was putting a real face on the thing. To be political about it, to say "killed" or even "assassinated" made it seem remote and unreal.

Zoey's face was scratched and she had her arm in a sling because of her broken collarbone. If she didn't concentrate she could taste the tear gas in her throat like bile. Her body throbbed with exhaustion, and she didn't think she could cry again if she tried - she felt devoid of tears. It could have been worse, she knew.

She might have been murdered.

Looking in the mirror, she still wasn't entirely sure she hadn't been.

She heard the President's voice on a CNN report, the press conference about his reinstatement to that office. She heard it but she now feared that any resemblance that man had to her father was entirely coincidental. It hadn't been this way when he was in Congress, or when he was governor. Back then, he was her Dad, and he had a cool job.

Now he was the President, and he had happened to have a family. Sometimes.

Her mother was furious with him; all the girls knew it when Mom was pissed off at Dad. This one was going to surpass them all, in terms of earth-shattering anger. Zoey wondered if divorce would enter the picture. The corner of her mouth turned up in a wry way, as she thought about being a broken daughter of a broken home. The guilt was still there and now there was something else, a bit of pique and selfishness. Sorrow, too, thinking of how her mother's demeanor screamed blame.

The CNN anchor was interviewing a psychologist who was coming up with theories about Zoey's mental state. "The President's daughter has been through a tragic ordeal and those who love her will have to watch for signs."

Signs of...insanity? Total derailment? She could read the headlines now. Would they say her name or call her by a case number?

83429.

She turned the television off.


End file.
